In a recent survey 44% of small business owners reported being unhappy with the performance of their employees.

To solve this type of problem, small business owners must first identify the cause and then create applicable solutions. There can be many reasons why employees under-perform and some leaders may point to poor attitudes, low motivation, low morale and individuals’ inability to work with others, or accept and adapt to change.

Although those reasons may be valid on the surface, there are always underlying issues that have led to the causes identified by the business leader.

The good news is that there are only two aspects to evaluate with under-performing employees. It’s either due to an individual’s:

ability, or

their attitude.

In either instance, the employee is not at fault.

(If you’d like help distinguishing whether its an ability or attitude issue and the communication issues that may have caused it and how better communication can fix it – let’s have a conversation. To schedule a free, no obligation Workplace Communication Assessment Strategy Session, go here now)

There are three primary communication mistakes business leaders make that prevent employees from being engaged in their workplace and contributing at higher levels:

Business Leader Mistake #1 – Not Giving Employees a Reason to be Engaged, Motivated & Contribute

Many business leaders mistakenly believe that providing someone the privilege of a steady income and certain quality of life via a paycheck should be enough to create a motivated employee.

Yet, studies continue to show that salary and benefits, although important for providing base levels of motivation, is not enough to generate higher levels of engagement.

Many managers and leaders say they are frustrated with the feeling they have to continually find ways to light a fire under their people to get them to do what needs to be done. Instead they should be investing energy in connecting to their employees on a personal level to instead find ways to light a fire within them.

The Employee Motivation Equation begins with creating an inspiring vision for the company that employees at all levels will be excited to contribute to. Daniel Pink, in his 2010 book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us identified “Purpose” as one of the key motivating components for a 21st Century workforce.

Business Leader Mistake #2 – Creating a De-Motivating Environment

In any new relationship there is always a honeymoon period where all the parties involved have good feelings about the possibilities moving forward. It’s the same when a new hire joins a company.

Unfortunately, a survey of about 1.2 million employees at mostly Fortune 1000 companies in the early part of this century conducted by Sirota Survey Intelligence, and revealed in 2005 that in 85% of companies, employee morale sharply declines after an employee’s first six months on the job, and continues to fade in ensuring years.

In a significant number of companies, as this Sirota research shows, something is occurring in these work environments that causes an enthusiastic and engaged employee to change their attitude.

Many factors can be attributed to this drop off, some of which include:

Managers that play favorites and communicate disrespectfully in the workplace,

Lack of positive feedback for contributions made

Business Leader Mistake #3 – Making a Wrong Hiring Choice

In the haste to fill positions, often those making the hiring decisions fail to invest enough time in making sure the new hire is a good fit for the position.

A “good fit’ includes assessing skills, knowledge, attitude, talent, and the education and experience a prospective team member will bring into the work environment. I call this the S.K.A.T.E. Hiring Profile (Skills, Knowledge, Attitude, Talent, & Education/Experience).

Additionally, sometimes due to unforeseen circumstances employees are asked to fill roles not originally intended, and for which their skills and talents are not the best fit.

In these situations, despite the employee’s best efforts he or she is unable to meet desired performance expectations, causing both the employee and the employer become disenchanted with the relationship. Yet, the onus must be on the employer to get it right when inviting someone into his or her work culture, and when asking a team member to take on additional work responsibilities.

What You Can Do

Before proclaiming employees are unmotivated, and/or unwilling, to perform to expectations and bring positive attitudes to the work environment start evaluating these three workforce mistakes from an organizational leadership and communication perspective to see where there is room for improvement.

Remember that it comes down to only two causes. It is either an ability problem or an attitude problem. too many times training and coaching are provided as solutions to an attitude problem, which is a huge waste of resources. As you might imagine, fixing an attitude problem is much different, and much harder, than an ability problem, in most cases.

Here are 3 steps to get you started:

First step is to get clarity there.

Second, once you make that decision, know that for whichever you choose, the foundational cause of that situation is some form of communication.

Third, decide on the best way to approach the situation and the individual.

(If you’d like help distinguishing whether its an ability or attitude issue and the communication issues that may have caused it and how better communication can fix it – let’s have a conversation. To schedule a free, no obligation Workplace Communication Assessment Strategy Session, go here now)

My apologies for taking two weeks to follow up on my last blog post where I introduced the concept of “this=that,” and promised a deeper explanation on the concept. Here’s where it came from:

Two weeks ago a client asked me for help with an employee she thought was acting passive-aggressively towards her.

In reviewing the email exchange upon which this small business owner’s claim was made, it was easy for me to determine she was jumping to conclusions and blaming her employee for acting in a passive-aggressive way.

She jumped to this conclusion because this employee has a history of passive-aggressive behavior.

In this instance, it was not the case.

I pointed out to my small business owner client my reasons why I didn’t see this as passive-aggressive behavior, but as a reasonable response to a situation outlined in an email from their boss.

Because of past behavior, this client was playing the game “this=that.”

“This=That” causes a lot of stress, mis-perceptions, mis-understandings, hurt feelings and numerous other issues, and possibly conflicts, in the workplace.

“This=That” is a short cut that the human brain uses to make connections more easy to explain what happens in our world.

This brain shortcut is usually effective. Often you can easily make a realistic cause/effect connection, such as, touching a hot stove burner will cause a burned hand, which is just like stepping barefoot on a loose hot charcoal in the backyard from a barbecue grill.

This is how we learn and works well when we’re growing up and when we’re learning a new skill.

It doesn’t work so well when we’re trying to understand human behavior.

When we apply ‘this=that” to human behavior, especially in the workplace, we are making assumptions, causing us to label and blame others.

Labeling and blaming others in the workplace can only cause problems and conflicts between co-workers, and between employees and their small business bosses.

Do you play “this=that” with your employees and team members?

Have you ever been the victim of someone playing “this=that,” making wrong assumptions as to why you’ve done something?

Feel free to leave a comment below with any questions or experiences regarding the concept of “this=that.”

It’s been almost two months since I’ve written a piece here as I’ve been focused on developing deep content for, and now delivering my newly launched Communication Power for Leaders group coaching program.

I under estimated how much time and energy it was going to take.

My apologies for leaving you over the least 7 weeks or so, and want you to know what I’m learning in the work I’ve been doing will be to your benefit.

One of those things is the work I’ve been doing to help the organizational leaders in the Communication Power for Leaders learn how by applying “The 3 Levels of High-Performance Leadership Communication” it can help build high-levels of trust between individuals and teams.

When the subject of “trust’ comes up, I get all sorts of questions about what it is and how to know if you have it and in what contexts.

Trust is a nebulous concept, isn’t it?

One thing I know is that the one thing that influences trust in the workplace more than any other is the level and quality of leadership and workplace communication.

When we think we have it someone’s behavior causes us to question it.

When we think we don’t have it, someone’s behavior surprises us.

For that reason I’ve tried to quantify it for my audiences and my clients.

Trust can be defined in many ways depending on the situation and context.

For workplace trust, I’ve defined it this way:“The absolute belief that when communicating with someone, both sides have the other’s best interest in mind and the best interest of the team/organization they serve, and that the other individual will follow through to do what they say they are going to do.”

Clients and seminar attendees also often ask how they can assess the level of trust with those in their sphere of influence.

To answer those concerns I’ve identified three workplace behavior and performance contexts that must be taken into account when assessing one’s level of trust:

Relationship – do you have the same values, beliefs, commitment to a common vision and what specifically within those components of your relationship are “musts” and deal breakers, what are the “shoulds” you can live with if not in sync, where can you “agree to disagree” to work together at the highest level.

Competency – can the person effectively fulfill their role at the level necessary to be successful. There may be people you have a great relationship with but you may not trust them in their competency to do the job (for example, I have a high-trust relationship with my wife and trust her with my life but if I needed heart surgery she does not have the competency in that context that I would trust her to do the job).

Follow Through – will the person, based on past experience, do what they say they’re going to do and follow through on their commitments in the time they commit to do it. Do they stay in touch and communicate proactively along the way keeping you engaged and in the loop without you having to chase them for updates.

That’s one powerful way to assess trust in your workplace and if it’s not at the level it needs to be, you need look no further than the quality of communication by the leaders in your workplace and the tone they set for communication across their work environments.

Had an interesting conversation with the president/ceo of a 65-employee company yesterday.

He told me that after attending my seminar on “The 7 Deadliest Communication Sins” he realized that after 20-years of leading his company he had become lazy in his communication with employees.

He admitted embarrassment that he, and other senior company leaders, were committing most of my seven communication sins.

I was impressed by his humility and commitment to improve communication at his company.

Specifically, he mentioned how he now knew he was stifling ideas from employees.

This is typical.

Many long-term business leaders shut down employees’ ideas because of their “experience” with similar ideas failing, or being inappropriate, in the past.

Typically, he would say, “thanks for the idea but we’ve tried things like that before and it won’t work,” or something to that effect.

Like most organizational leaders, he didn’t believe he had the time to rehash the reasons these ideas employees brought him wouldn’t work.

Yet, he realized that type of employee interaction was killing the motivation, morale and engagement he needed for his company to thrive.

Since the workshop last fall he said, “now, when someone brings me an idea that didn’t work in the past, I explain what happened and give them the history behind the situation so they understand our experience.”

“I then, tell them to take that information and use it to create a strategy to address those issues and come back to me with some options to see if it’s worth revisiting.

He said, “this new approach gives people perspective on the history, helps them understand my answer while communicating that I’m open to revisiting the idea if we can overcome things that prevented it from working last time.”

This is a true “open door” policy.

I know most of you are saying, “I don’t have time to do this.”

Maybe, maybe not.

I bet you are already investing too much time in fire fighting and dealing with the drama of the moment, though.

I promise investing a little more time on the front end like this will begin to reduce the need for fire fighting and dealing with the daily drama.

P.S. – I’m really excited because next week I’ll be presenting my first seminar on the topic of “How to Transform Your Workplace from Drama & Defensiveness to Employee Initiative & Ownership” to a sold out audience at the Rochester (NY) Business Alliance. So the webinar is not far behind, grab the report today at www.LeadershipCommunicationExpert.com/dramatoownershipreport

He built a lucrative career proclaiming that he “never got any respect.”

His standup routines were a series of one liners lamenting his lot in life, such as,“I don’t get any respect, last week I called the suicide prevention hotline and they tried to talk me into it.”

In leadership I find the concept of communicating with empathy to be the same.

Leaders are confused by it.

Many believe it’s too soft to communicate with empathy. Others believe they know how to communicate with empathy and struggle to get the results so they think it doesn’t work.

The former believe their people will see them as weak and will walk all over them, disrespecting their position. The latter are doing it incorrectly.

I’ll address the former first, and save the latter for next week so you get this series in bite size chunks.

When leaders communicate with the right doses of empathy it offers many benefits, including:

allows people to open up as to the challenges they are facing

people feel comfortable opening sharing those challenges without the fear of feeling inadequate

it builds a connection between the leader and his/her people that allows both sides to care about each other personally and professionally

it allows the leader to be direct and firm when they need to be because their people trust them, and know they are being told things that are in their best interest and its not just for the leaders own interest.

For all those reasons and more, leaders should give “empathy” more respect.

There are 2 specific contexts leaders should apply empathy in their environment, you’ll learn about those next week, too.

All of March’s FREE Strategy Sessions have been scheduled, look for April’s to be released in a couple of weeks.

In the meantime, you can learn about one of the contexts of workplace empathy in my newest white paper report:

P.S. – I’m really excited because next week I’ll be presenting my first seminar on the topic of “How to Transform Your Workplace from Drama & Defensiveness to Employee Initiative & Ownership” to a sold out audience at the Rochester (NY) Business Alliance. So the webinar is not far behind, grab the report today at www.LeadershipCommunicationExpert.com/dramatoownershipreport

Inspired Audience Member Shares His Experience

The City of Hartford MHIS Division

Satisfied Clients Speak

"The work Skip did with our Information Technologies Division transformed how we communicate and work together, including bringing us a new identity and name, as the city’s Metro Hartford Innovation Services Department.

Skip’s ability to customize his approach and bring flexibility to our specific needs, situation and unique work environment, gave us just what we needed, when we needed it. He’s been a pleasure to work with and brought our organization high-value and a measurable return on our investment."